He reaches into the back of his jeans and pulls out what I first mistake as a marker, but it’s larger, thicker. He uncaps it, and two small wires twist into a perfect point. He pushes a button and they glow. He lifts the edges of my shirt, pushing it up, and inspects the skin, where I have more scars from the accident, less pronounced than my face, but still there. Without warning, he presses the cautery pen to my abdomen and for one moment there is nothing and then—a hot, furious sear against my flesh that my body does everything to get away from. I twist and spasm; Lev pushes my shoulders down until I’m still so he can mark me again and again, and a dead, sweet scent fills the air. I don’t understand, at first, that the smell is me.
I’m burning.
I’m panting by the time it stops, his mottled abdomen in my head.
Rob’s mottled abdomen.
My own.
He sets the pen down.
Tears stream down my face. He wipes one away, his fingers tracing the line of my scar.
“I know it hurts, Lo, but I’m not asking you to endure more than I was made to endure.”
I close my eyes, swallowing back bile, trying to get my breathing under control.
“Did you do this to Bea?”
He doesn’t answer and I begin to cry again because the idea of her going through this is more unbearable than living through it myself because I know, now, she went through it thinking she was alone. She was so alone …
Lev reaches for the table, for the other thing he brought, and I see it now: a kettle.
He sets it on the floor next to him and I feel the heat of it reach for me.
“Oh God. Please, please … please don’t—”
He brings his face close to mine, pressing his forehead to mine. “This is nothing I’m doing to you. It’s something I’m doing for you. I’m laying your soul bare as mine was laid bare, and in the next thirty hours, God will reveal you. This was my path and it’s my gift to you.” He straightens and takes the kettle, contemplating it before raising it over me.
“No, no, no, no—”
He shushes me then says, over my body, “‘Whoever desires to save his life will lose it and whoever will lose his life for my sake…’”
He tilts the spout forward. The world explodes around me, my body convulsing as the scalding hot water burns my skin, burns through it, turning the whole world white.
“Lo,” he says.
“You killed her,” I whisper.
He buttons my shirt back up, and the material clings to the raw mess of weeping flesh. The fire still blazes across my stomach. I can’t stop shivering.
“Lo.” My eyes roll from side to side, trying and failing to focus. His hands are on my face. “Lo, look at me.” I’m making mewling noises, dying noises. I can’t seem to stop.
“I saved her. What happened to her was a mercy.”
He tells me the next thirty hours are mine.
He tells me to pray.
“Bea,” I say; my only prayer.
I dream of the past, but I can’t find her there.
Every time I wake, I’m alone.
“You’re okay,” a gentle voice tells me.
My eyes flutter open and I curl in on myself because consciousness is pain, and the burns across my body rage. A reassuring hand on my shoulder. I look at Foster as he lifts my shirt, inspecting the wounds. He winces and I wonder if the humanity of his response is something I can reason with. If he loves Bea as much as Rob told me he did, as much as Bea told Rob he did. But then he lifts his own shirt, shows me his own scars.
“It will be worth it. I promise.”
I shake my head. “Bea is dead.”
“I told you, Lo. She’s coming back.”
“He killed her.”
“Don’t say that. Come on.”
“He killed her.” I sob, as he pulls me up into a sitting position. The pain is so bad, it leaves me breathless.
“You’re not thinking clearly,” he says.
I stare up at him. “Emmy looks like you.”
His face goes pale. “What?”
“I could only see Bea in her, but now I see you everywhere. Emmy’s built like you, she…” I inhale sharply, trying to catch my breath. “She has your hands … the shape of her face…”
“Who told you about Emmy?” he asks.
“Rob.”
“Rob? But who—”
“Bea told him.”
Foster moves away from me, his hand over his mouth.
“She wanted out,” I say, my voice raising, desperate. “Bea wanted out. She wanted to get out of this—”
“I know. I know,” he hisses, quieting me. “I know that. But she’s not—it’s because she just couldn’t handle … Lev said she couldn’t handle looking at Emmy and seeing her sin…”
“She wanted her daughter. She wouldn’t have left her here. She was going to leave with Emmy and she never made it. But she would have never left Emmy behind. Never.” My throat hitches. “You know she’d never leave Emmy behind. She’s dead.”
Foster shakes his head. “It’s not true.”
Casey’s familiar footsteps sound down the hall, getting closer.
“Now I’m going to die,” I whisper.
“No. No. You’re not going to die—you’re going to be baptized. That’s all. You’ll feel better when this is all over, you’ll see, you’ll see…”
He pulls me to my feet and I grab at his face, digging my nails into his cheeks.
“I’m going to die,” I tell him again and he shakes his head, refusing it. “No, Foster, listen to me. I’m not coming back. Bea is not coming back. So please, please … while I’m at the lake, you take Emmy and go.” I force him to look at me, to see the truth, to hear it, to feel it so close to his bones it can’t be denied. “Take your daughter and go.”
Lev stands at the edge of the shore, his face to the water and the slow setting sun.
“Go to him,” Casey says softly at my back.
I make the walk to him alone, my steps halting, pained. The burns across my skin feel like they’re spreading, feel like they’re wrapping themselves around my body whole, burrowing deep past its surface. Every time I breathe, I can feel the fire claiming more and more of me.
I almost want for the water now.
I meet Lev with my arms clutched around my stomach. He looks beyond me, to Casey, and nods, signaling her back to the house.
“God has revealed you,” he says. “Tell me who you are.”
I hope Emmy is in Foster’s arms right now, that he’s carried her through the house, through the front door, has stolen away with her in a car, the road stretched before them, a whole beautiful future stretched before them …
I try to make these images real in my mind, real enough to die with.
“Who are you?” he asks me, holding out his hand.
“Bea’s sister,” I say.
He lowers his hand.
“‘Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me,’” he says. “‘Anyone who loves their sons or daughters more than me isn’t worthy of me. And anyone who doesn’t take their cross and follow after me isn’t worthy of me.’”